Four Steps
by The innocent and the young
Summary: '... but there's four steps to death. Four steps that I think I had to take to be able to get through his death. Each one hurt more the the last, but it...helped.' Mostly Annie/Mitchell. Based at the end of season 4. One shot!


**So, I was listening to Red by Taylor Swift, and this just kinda happened. So it's based loosely on the chorus of that. Plus, I just kinda wanted to try my hand at some Being Human fanfiction as I avoid college work and updating other stuff. Um so yeah.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing unfortunately.**

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I never knew it, but there's four steps to death. Four steps that I think I had to take to be able to get through his death. Each one hurt more the the last, but it...helped. You've got to lose someone before you can truly see someone for what they did. You've got to miss then so much it hurts before you can understand how much they meant. You've got to try and forgot the ones you love to finally see how much you cared for them. And you've got to love someone to go through to the fourth step. You've got to love them with all of your being and then some.

Losing Mitchell was harder then I had ever imagined it could be, not that I'd imagined it often. I never thought I'd really lose him. We were going to be together for eternity, after George and Nina had gone, it'd just be me and Mitchell. Always there for each other. But life changed and things get thrown out the window. And people die. Even vampires can die. I just never thought Mitchell would be one of them. I never thought, not even for a moment that I would truly lose him. Sure I was willing to let him go to jail, to spend forever with him behind some cold stone wall. As long as I was with him, what did it matter. The thought of him dying, of willingly being killed, it never really crossed my mind. Losing him...it was like everything suddenly opened up in front of me. We weren't safe, we weren't ever going to be human. We all have to die eventually.

After he was gone, and Nina died and George died it was...lonely. Sure there was Tom and Hal and Eve. But it...it just wasn't the same. it hurt to miss someone. I never really thought about it much, about the ones that got left behind when you left. But this time I was the one left behind. I was the one dealing with the loss, trying to carry the weight of three people and trying to not let the memories fade. The harder you hold on to something, the faster is seems to fade is what I've learnt. Imagine the colour grey. Not quite black, but not quite white, just stuck in the middle of the spectrum. That was me, dark grey and trying to hold onto the memories of them. Of him. I never knew it was possible to miss someone so much, but I did. I missed the way he'd always come down on a morning, rushing through his breakfast because he was late again, how he'd run his hand through his hair, trying to push it back but always failing, I even missed his stupid fingerless gloves that he never seemed to take off. I just missed him more then I knew was possible.

After missing someone, you try to forget them. You want to forget them because other wise it just hurts to much to carry on remembering them. I wanted to forgot them. Forget him. I wanted to be able to turn on the TV to see the Real Hustle and not want to burst out crying or shouting. I wanted to walk into their empty rooms and sort through their things. But I just...couldn't. Trying to forget him it was so much harder then anything I've tried to do before. Everything around me seemed to remind me of him, sparked a memory in my mind. Even the most mundane of things brought back a moment, a single scene with him in it. I couldn't even look at a pair of marigolds without wanting to both laugh and cry. I never thought trying to move on, trying to forget someone would be hard. I guess I never counted in the fact that I loved him. Maybe that's why it's so hard. Trying to forget someone you love is like trying to tell your heart to stop beating for a minuet so you can test something out.

I guess loving him though, that was the thing that hurt the most. After losing him, and missing him and want to forget him, after all the fucking pain he put me through, I still loved him. I couldn't stop loving him. To love someone, I think you've got to give yourself to them in someone, you've got to...show them. But I couldn't. Not anymore. Because he was dead and I was dead, but he'd passed through and I was still here. We were meant to spend eternity forever. Instead we only got a year. I wanted to hate, I wanted to hit him and throw things, I wanted to cry, to scream. But I couldn't. I just couldn't because I loved him, and loving him hurt, but I just couldn't stop. I see the colour red and I see him, I see his blood when the stake when through his chest back in the little pink house. I see his red shirt he use to wear. I see the blood of the people he killed. I see the blood he never spilled as he turned to ash on the wind. I see red and I see him because he was red to me. He was a burning red of passion and anger and love.

I can't let him go, I can't forgot or lose the memories I have. I can't move on from the past that was him and me and George and Nina. And it hurts to remember and it hurts to hold on, but I can't let go. Tom and Hal, they're not my boys. They don't need me like they did. So when my door comes again and step through it, when Eve is there, I smile and then there's another door. White light and all that crap that you want to see. I don't think about what I'm going to do or say, or even who'll be on the other side, because I know. I know he'll be there, because I'm the love of his long life and he is mine and we'll spend an eternity together one way or another. George once said the only real happiness in life is to be love and be loved. And he was right.

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**I'm not to keen on the ending,but I didn't really know how else to end it and I didn't want to do a while reunine thing because I didn't want to make anyone ooc, so sorry about that. Let me know about what you thought of it if you would?**

**Hope you enjoyed :)**


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